Current standards for 32 gigabit per second Fiber Channel communications (32GFC) use forward error correction. Forward error correction procedures utilize complex algorithms that involve significant processing resources to complete. Current techniques to calculate bit error rates (i.e., the quality of service) of optical transmission links use forward error correction (i.e., forward error correction must be terminated).
Aligning optical frames for 32GFC communications requires that there be no errors on an optical transmission link. Specifically, alignment of 32GFC optical frames can only be detected once the forward error correction redundancy received is equal to the redundancy extracted during a forward error correction procedure.